Okinawa souvenirs

Chinsuko crackers and pineapple jam

A friend of mine went to Okinawa for his honeymoon and he came back with presents and souvenirs for me. Some were souvenirs, some were birthday presents. All were great.

Rubber chicken pins, iPhone shaped deck of cards and playing card decorative stuff

The iPhone deck of cards had an pear on the back, instead of an apple. This is funny since my name in Japanese sounds like the Japanese word for pear.

More birthday gifts

Even a week after my birthday people kept giving me presents (one year people gave me birthday presents in March, despite my birthday being in October; Japanese people work so much you cannot always find the time to meet up quickly enough). A French student I am friends with baked bread and muffins for me. A magician I know gave me three bottles of Red Bull. Another magician gave me the smart phone friendly gloves (but they were in another photo of presents earlier too).

The most presents I have ever got in Japan

After visiting Sweden Hills, I was told I should come to our magic bar. They were having an event there called "Jonas's birthday", so they thought I should participate, at least a little. Lots of people that I hardly know showed up and it was a lot of fun. They all brought presents, too. Most of them came in convenience store plastic bags saying Family Mart (there just so happens to be a Family Mart store on the ground floor of the same building our magic bar is in).

The presents were great! I got extreme amounts of Japanese sweet custard pudding, I got Golden Bomber (an "air band", people pretending to play instruments) ramen, extreme amounts of SoyJoy nutritional bars (delivered by making fun of me doing a magic trick I often do...), a cake, a frozen natto (rotten soy beans) desert thing, a t-shirt saying "I am a total pervert" in Japanese, gloves that you can wear and still use a smart phone, and a meal card for 20 meals of Japanese curry at one of the best curry places in Sapporo.

This was more presents than I have ever received before in Japan. I, and some other people, was also spoon fed cake by people who were not particularly good (or rather, not particularly interested) in aiming the spoon at your mouth.

Emu meat, crocodile meat, kangaroo meat, cake, and home grown popcorn

After a hectic Halloween, I was invited to my friends in Sweden Hills. I had some Swedish presents to give them from my mother (that I brought from Sweden last time I was there), and they turned out to have a birthday cake for me. They also had emu meat, crocodile meat, and kangaroo meat to try. I have had kangaroo before, and something that was probably alligator. Emu was a first, though.

They also had popcorn that was 100% home made. They grew the corn themselves in their fields, then dried it themselves. They gave me some to take home, and they popped some popcorn in a pot. They kept taking the lid off to see if it was finished, and have lots of popcorn fly out of the pot when it turned out not to be finished, though.

Birthday present with only 5 minutes left

With 15 minutes or so left of my birthday, I got a message from a friend that "I have a present for you, you should come". So I rushed to her bar, and got a birthday present. This is the first time in I don't know how many years that someone gave me a birthday present on my actual birthday (with 5 minutes left of the birthday). The present was great. It was a t-shirt with a photo of me.

So this is a photo of 38 year old me wearing a t-shirt with a photo of 37 year old me. Next year I will use this (or a similar photo) to make a t-shirt that 39 year old me can wear, and every year the central image will become smaller, haha.

I also got food. For some reason I got spaghetti with meatballs with candles stuck in the meatballs.

Then the "mama" of the place sang Happy Birthday for me. This, I believe, is quite rare. I have been there many many times but I have never heard her sing. She sings quite well, though.

They also had a new game. There was a small skeleton that projected images of ghosts on the walls and on other people. If you saw red ghosts you were supposed to shoot them with the ray gun, and if you saw green ghosts you were not supposed to shoot. The ghosts also moved around a bit, but not that fast. The game kept score of how many red ghosts you had shot, etc. A very entertaining game.

Lonely birthday celebration

I was in Tokyo on vacation Sunday to Tuesday, and I was in the Tokyo area for work on Thursday to Friday. Wednesday I was in Sapporo, working as normal. Wednesday was also my birthday.

I spent the day working until very late, as usual. Then I rushed to a restaurant I like, and planned to have dinner there. They said: "Ah, Jonas. Happy birthday!" Then they said: "We are all out of rice, so bye-bye", and sent me home. I was too late to get any food.

All my friends either work during the evenings and nights or they work during the days so they do not want to hang out during weekday evenings. So I ended up buying a nutritional bar of the SoyJoy brand for dinner. Very healthy, I am sure. I even got a candle to stick into the food. But it was a bit of a lonely birthday dinner.

Birthday Bar, and a dove

When I was at my friend's birthday party, my friend also gave me a birthday present (only 5 weeks after my birthday). She had found a place that sold small decorative figures, and one of them was a dove. My name means dove, so she thought this would be fitting for me.

She had found it at a place called "Birthday Bar", which is a slightly strange name. It was not a bar, but more like a present shop, if I understood correctly. They sell things with slogans such as "Message in a soap".

I also like that they have a stork on the bags. Storks are strongly connected with the day of your birth, of course.

Birthday party

I was given a cracker that shot flags since I "am a foreigner". There was even a Swedish flag in the set.

I was invited to a friend's birthday party, and it was much more exciting than my birthday. There were huge crackers shooting various kinds of confetti, there was a mountain of presents, there were fancy Pocky sticks, there were Swedish newspapers (!), there was good food, and there were around 10 people there celebrating.

A mountain of presents, much bigger than the presents on my birthday...

A Swedish newspaper! That someone picked up in Norway.

Mittens knitted by one of the participants, with a hole for fingers to pop out and use smart phone screens.

Cake!

Fancy Pocky

Pocky with "butter and sugar" instead of chocolate coating

The restaurant was called Bonaparte

Birthday presents!

Normally, this roll cake is shared among 6 people, but we got 4 complete roll cakes for the 4 people working ... a bit much perhaps :-)

One of our regular customers in our magic bar always comes with lots of omiyage (edible souvenirs) since she does not live in Sapporo. And she usually brings a lot. One time she brought 6 mega sized hamburgers, for instances.

This time, she brought roll cake. Normally this roll cake would be shared among 6 people. She figured that since there are four people working in our magic bar, she should bring four complete roll cakes... which was perhaps a bit too much... But they were quite good.

Russian roulette taken to the level of "Russian suicide" instead of roulette.

In our magic bar we also serve spicy chicken. One option is called "Russian roulette", and then you get 8 pieces of chicken were 2 or 3 are super spicy. And that actually means very spicy. I have grown numb towards very spicy food after eating too much Death Sauce and other fairly spicy things, but this Russian roulette stuff still burns painfully. Our regular customer usually comes with the same friend every time, and this time they ordered the Russian roulette but asked for six pieces of chicken, with five pieces being super spicy.

Then they explained that they wanted to play the game with the two of them and the four of us working. Two of us cannot really handle spicy stuff, while me and my boss are fairly OK with the really spicy stuff too. Having 5 "bullets" in a gun with 6 "chambers" is not so much roulette as suicide... Strangely enough, one of our customers managed to draw the only not very spicy chicken. The other customer turned out to have no pain receptors at all (at least it seemed like that) and was completely fine even with the very spicy chicken she got. Very impressive. Two of our staff were running around screaming.

Dove themed badges, cookies, and a t-shirt!

Our customer had also brought birthday presents for me. I got a dove themed set of things, including dove cookies (a Tokyo omiyage) and dove badges ("Jonas" means "dove"). I also got a pink t-shirt that says "hat trick" and shows a magician's hat and a dove. A quite nice hat, and a quite nice birthday present. I also got a gold colored deck of cards.

Birthday food

My birthday is at the end of October. Last time, my birthday celebration ended up being in March, which surprised both me (who did not know it was my birthday party) and the guests (who did not know my birthday was half a year earlier). This year, I had a birthday party only two or three weeks after the actual birthday. This was also organized by completely different people than last years party.

My friend is great at cooking, which is dangerous because you end up eating too much. This time she made pizzas, and cakes.

In need of a new facial expression

"The pose young girls seem to use in photos"

My birthday started on a high note (actually, the partying started about 15 minutes before it technically became my birthday) with cake and two of my friends. The rest of the day was less exciting, and I ended up staying at work until quite late, and got home at around ten in the evening. I was thinking of going out to eat, but since no one wanted to join me and I was a bit tired, I had a luxurious dinner consisting of one "CalorieMate", all alone. This makes it possibly even more lonely than last years birthday dinner, which I spent with a fake dove that I made myself, haha.

"'Trying to be sexy'-wink"

"Impressed"

Anyway, when dressing up as a zombie for Halloween, lots of people want to take pictures of themselves together with me. When being a zombie, a good pose is never a problem. You can pretend to bite the other people, or you can look generally scary.

"Fake happiness"

"Awkwardly smiling"

With my latest face painting experiment, people also came up and wanted to take photos of themselves with me. I still have not figured out a good pose. A big problem is that I am not really sure what it was supposed to look like. It was kind of supposed to be a broken porcelain doll, but it does not look very much like that. The best photo from that day is when I am sitting in the subway, pretending not to notice the camera. My second favorite is me holding a fork.

"Eh?"

"Unhappy"

I am thinking maybe the same style can be used for a clown/jester/harlequin instead. Then it would also be easier to figure out what clothes to wear (but not easier to get hold of such clothes, perhaps).

Having nothing to do on my birthday, I spent the few hours after work trying out facial expressions at home. Clowns should perhaps be smiling?

I also got hold of a wig. It is probably made for girls trying to look like blond girls (Japanese girls are generally not blond, and even if they bleach and color their hair, it never really becomes blond). My friend told me it makes me look like an 80-ies heavy metal band member if I put it on when not having painted my face. After painting my face, it kind of makes me look like Dee Snider.

Before going to bed, I also learned that if you glue fake eyelashes to your face, you should consider doing that before painting your face white. While the face paint washes of easily, mixing the paint with glue or putting glue on top of the paint actually makes it really REALLY hard to get off...